Through the Virgin Mary, God becomes "God with us" forever

In a time "full of the clash of war, growing injustices, famine, poverty, suffering... the Lord, through the Virgin Mary, continues to give us his Son, who calls us to be brothers." This is what Pope Francis said in the homily of the Mass he celebrated on the morning of Monday, December 12, 2022, in the Vatican Basilica, on the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, patroness and mother of the Americas.

Our God guides the history of humanity at all times, nothing remains outside his power, which is tenderness and providential love. He makes himself present through a gesture, an event, a person. He never ceases to lean over our world in need, wounded and troubled, to assist it with his compassion and mercy. His way of intervening,  of manifesting himself always surprises us and fills us with joy. He provokes our wonder and he does it in his own way.

The reading from the letter to the Galatians offers us a precise indication that helps us to contemplate, with gratitude, the way to redemption and to becoming his adopted children: "When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman" (Gal 4:4).

And so it is, the coming of the Son in our human flesh is the supreme expression of the divine method of salvation. God, who so loved the world, sent us his Son, "born of a woman", so that "everyone who believes may have eternal life through him" (Jn 3:16). Thus, in Jesus, born of Mary, God becomes forever and irrevocably "God-with-us", and walks beside us as our brother and companion. He has come to stay. Nothing that is ours is foreign to him because he is like "one of us", a close friend, equal to us in all things, except in sin.

Excerpt from an article in L'Osservatore Romano, December 15, 2022

www.osservatoreromano.va